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Old 2012-09-17, 10:55   Link #42
Fahd
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Surrey, UK
Age: 39
Quote:
Originally Posted by LeoXiao View Post
The whole thing is entirely pointless when you realize that nobody actually lives on the islands. They should just bomb it into the water and pretend it never existed. EDIT: But apparently the whole things is 7km^2 so I'm not sure what the feasibility of that is.
Eh, this isn't really about the land, so much as the possible (?) undersea gas/oil deposits and maybe fishing rights in the waters around those islands. Well that and it's a neat issue to boost your popularity, and rally people around so they can forget about economic hardships, domestic policy, etc. Land/sea disputes are also an amusing distracting tactic used by democracies as well, in order to bring in votes; see Governor Ishihara's statement about wanting to buy those islands and develop them.

As for the mainland Chinese, I somehow doubt the village farmers living in inland China, or the migrant worker who's left his/her child(ren) behind give two hoots about this dispute.
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